The Washington Post called the book "the vexing political-treatise-cum-mystical-tract." They wrote, "Weil’s vision for a postwar France — and, more generally, for a utopian society — begins with her rejection of rights in favor of “obligations.” “A right is not effective on its own,” she writes, “but solely in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” A right derives its moral force from a law, a mere contrivance, but “there is an obligation towards every human being through the mere fact that they are a human being."”

first published in 1949

There is a scarcity of unique perspectives, and Simone Weil fits the bill. You'll find yourself struggling to place her on a political compass, and that's because she does not really fall under any broad category. This work is opinionated, genuine, and well-intentioned. I found myself in disagreement with some of her infeasible (and in my opinion, sometimes harmful) proposals, but for the most part, her overall message is valid, and we should all acknowledge the problem of lack of well-rooted lives that is super relevant today. ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Weil-Lenracinement/100073
> Esprit, No. 336 (7) (Juillet 2007), p. 212 : https://esprit.presse.fr/actualite-des-livres/simone-weil/les-besoins-de-l-ame-4...
> Esprit, No. 387 (8/9) (Août-septembre 2012), pp. 52-68 : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/gerard-valerie/simone-weil-l-enracinement-la-de...
> Spirale, (187), 30–31 : https://drive.google.com/file/d/151cPPYGtzR3l_pLqnjE3jCaEBn8TNjAR/view?usp=shari...
> Esprit, No. 336 (7) (Juillet 2007), p. 212 : https://esprit.presse.fr/actualite-des-livres/simone-weil/les-besoins-de-l-ame-4...
> Esprit, No. 163 (1) (JANVIER 1950), pp. 172-174 : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/emmanuel-mounier/simone-weil-l-enracinement-161...
> Critiques Libres : http://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcrit/49562
> Lire Simone Weil (G.L., Le devoir, 25 avr. 2009) : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2815239

Simone Weil was a moralist, emphasizing the duty of man towards eternity and his fellows. Her life intertwined the spiritual and the neurotic, and she demonstrated an unusual capacity for identifying herself with the suffering of others. She tended to put her opinions immediately into practice in her personal life. Her originality as a thinker lay in the way she consistently fused experience, thought and action into one single indivisible whole. She was not a systematic writer, but L' Enracinement was her one sustained and comprehensive effort toward a systematic statement. It was an impressive attempt to put "Christian democracy" into writing, based on a conservative and traditional critique of society combined with socialism. She was influenced by Kierkegaardian existentialism, the rationalism of Alain, the socialism of Proudhon and Marx and the theology and sociology of the Catholic Church. She condemned the influence of Rome on Europe and the Catholic Church, and was a trenchant critic of the Church. She converted to Christianity but never entered the Catholic Church. She condemned France for the suppression of the Albigensians and other minorities, repudiated both the Ancien Regime and the French Revolution and found the roots of French defeat in 1940 in the moral and intellectual degradation of the French elite. Some of her political views were absurd, utopian and anti-democratic such as her proposed limitations on freedom of the press and her condemnation of political parties on the grounds that they are all potentially totalitarian. Like Charles Peguy, she is one of those lonely figures belonging to no party yet claimed by all.[1951]